Folklore, identity and matter are the foundations of the work of Martina Orska and an integral part of her life: the photographer, art director and artist form an unbreakable unity. The backbone of her work being a natural tendency towards conceptualization, she has aesthetic references rooted in her Ecuadorian origins that stand out in the way she uses color and composition.

Although inspiring and creating beauty could be the intention of Martina’s photographs, her work creates a personal language where theatrality provides a subtle liveliness to stills. Her imaginary being close to the celebration of identity, she develops projects around the more playful aspect of individuals. Martina explores culture and specifically rituals where folklore blossoms: bringing together myths and reality, past and present. In this quest for authenticity, picturing crafts becomes much more than describing traditions. Paraphrasing her own words, these images give a voice to what we do not want to miss or forget, the identity of our culture. Small details, scattered around several objects that define who we are.

A researcher fond of experimentation, Orska sees the evolution of her work as a journey of self-discovery and consequently some of her projects address invisibilized themes such as mental health. She does this with devoted creativity and a constant dialogue with organic forms. To her, trees, plants and other elements in nature, share many resemblances with the human body and the human cycle. This parallelism nurtures a series of projects where the frontier between photography and matter becomes evocatively blurry.